Category Archives: natural history

Dōmo arigatō

Posted on 3 Jul, 2015 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Along with my collaborators, Erik Sotka, Courtney Murren, Allan Strand and our battery of students, we have embarked on an intense summer field season. Erik and I are leading the effort of sampling populations of the introduced red seaweed Gracilaria … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, blogging, community, evolution, haploid-diploid, natural history | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Societal constructs, and Genetic diversity

Posted on 2 Jul, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

While we grapple with numerous discoveries of variation in genomic diversity in humans, interest has subsequently risen in understanding their causes/results. Two recent papers describe experiments to determine (a) the effects of marital rules (who gets to marry whom) on … Continue reading →

Posted in evolution, genomics, natural history, population genetics, selection, societal structure | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Old dogs, and 'carnivorous' pandas

Posted on 4 Jun, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

It was a good fortnight for large mammals! Two recent studies attempt to date the emergence of modern canids, and offer insights into the gut microbiomes of giant pandas. Ancient Wolf Genome Reveals an Early Divergence of Domestic Dog Ancestors and … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, evolution, genomics, metagenomics, microbiology, natural history, Paleogenomics, population genetics, speciation | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

When genomes duplicate

Posted on 8 May, 2015 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Whole genome duplication events have played an important role in the evolutionary history of plants. Vallejo-Marín et al. (2015) describe origins of a new polyploid species, Mimulus peregrines, found on the Scottish mainland as well as the Orkney Islands. It was formed within … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, evolution, genomics, natural history, plants | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Gene flow and Population Fitness

Posted on 7 May, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

Fitness effects of gene flow (both advantageous and deleterious) have garnered plenty of recent press and scientific exploration. At the population level, the concepts and consequences are notoriously familiar. In the context of immigration, they reduce to existing genetic variation, … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, evolution, genomics, natural history, population genetics, selection, speciation, theory | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Polyploidy can melt the frozen niche

Posted on 6 May, 2015 by Rob Denton

The rabbit hole of asexual reproduction literature is full of weird detours in the evolution of life. There are asexual lineages that facultatively have sex, asexuals that still need sperm from other species,  and asexuals that steal sperm from other species, … Continue reading →

Posted in DNA barcoding, natural history, plants | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Clonal conundrum, part un

Posted on 19 Apr, 2015 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Molecular ecologists are faced with a clonal conundrum when we wish to investigate the evolutionary ecology of clonal organisms. An attack of the clones is not something that should frighten one away …

Posted in Coevolution, community ecology, conservation, domestication, evolution, haploid-diploid, natural history, population genetics | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

dN(eutralist) < dS(electionist) Part 5

Posted on 16 Apr, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

The neutral theory predicts that species with small census (and effective) population sizes are subject to greater drift (or allele frequency fluctuations), and vice versa. In other words, species with larger population sizes are expected to maintain more neutral diversity … Continue reading →

Posted in evolution, mutation, natural history, plants, population genetics, theory | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Migration on the brain

Posted on 15 Apr, 2015 by Rob Denton

If you’ve watched any number of nature shows in your lifetime, you’ve seen the astounding migrations made by salmonid fishes. You can count on seeing a shot of salmon darting against the current and catapulting themselves over turbulent falls (like … Continue reading →

Posted in Molecular Ecology, the journal, natural history, RNAseq, transcriptomics | Tagged , | 2 Comments

The gopher tortoise gut microbiome

Posted on 14 Apr, 2015 by Noah Snyder-Mackler

A few weeks ago I wrote about a study on socially structured gut microbiomes in wild baboons. Well, now I’m here to tell you about a new study that examined the population structure of tortoise gut microbiomes.

Posted in community ecology, genomics, natural history, next generation sequencing, population genetics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment